Pascal (programming language): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:50, 16 August 2002

Revision as of 17:40, 16 August 2002

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During the [[1990s]] compilers that can be re-targeted to different hardware architectures became more prevalent. This allowed for Pascal translation to native machine code that is at the same time easily ported to new hardware.

With ''Turbo PacalPascal'' version 5 Borland added [[Object Oriented Programming|Object Orientation]] to Pascal forming the ''Object Pascal'' dialect. Their main language from [[1996]] on, [[Delphi programming language|Delphi]], is in turn based on this. A version of Delphi for Linux is known as [[Kylix]].

== Criticism ==

While very popular (although more so in the 1980s and early 1990s than at the time of writing), Pascal has been widely criticised for being unsuitable for "serious" use outside of teaching. [[Brian Kernighan]], co-creator of the [[C programming language]], summed up the most important criticisms of Pascal as early as 1981, in his paper [http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html| Why Pascal Is Not My Favourite Programming Language]. The summary of Kernighan's criticism of Pascal in that paper is as follows:

#Since the size of an array is part of its type, the programmer can't create procedures that deal with general arrays, without regard to their size. This is particularly a problem for string handling.